Old Pond Publishing

April 2010

04/30/2010

In May 1979 two young Englishmen travelled to Oklahoma to become members of Dale Starks’ harvesting crew.For Rob and Charlie this was the start of memorable years driving Massey Ferguson combines the length and breadth of the American wheat belt. This is Rob’s story, a vivid account of endless hours of work, rattlesnakes, truck wrecks, summer lightning, tornados, favourite bars and the ‘honeys’ at the grain elevators.

Rob went on to do five years’ harvesting with Dale Starks who comes to life in these pages with all his wisdom and cussedness. This is the man who starred in Yellow Trail from Texas, the BBC documentary that first inspired Rob and Charlie to make the trip.

In England, Rob was working as an agricultural contractor. For him, machines and harvesting were more than a way of life – they were a passion. This enthusiasm, which brought Rob long-lasting friendships from his American days, illuminates every page of his book.

Seriously large hydraulic excavators are the subject of Steven Vale’s next DVD. But this time he has left the quarries and mines and gone onto the water to track down and film the world’s largest under water diggers.Rivers, canals, lakes, ports and harbour entrances need dredging on a regular basis to prevent sediment from building up. Much of the lighter material is removed by massive suction dredgers.But these are no good at some new port and harbour-widening and deepening projects where heavy clay and rock is encountered. In these cases powerful hydraulic excavators are called in to reach down into the murky depths.

In 2009 the film crew visited the port of Raahe at the top end of the Gulf of Bothnia in northern Finland.The project was in the hands of international dredging company Royal Boskalis Westminster. It was tough digging and a race against time before the return of the Arctic winter when the sea freezes.Three of its most powerful excavators were working round the clock to ensure the job got done on time.Severed from their undercarriages, the upper structures of two Hitachi EX1900s (left and bottom) are bolted to pontoons known as Attila and Koura.

But even these powerful nautical marvels are dwarfed by the Nordic Giant, the dredging company’s biggest backhoe dredger.Time after time the Liebherr P995 hydraulic excavator (right) scoops up nearly 35 tonnes. This ferocious machine easily fills a split barge in just three-quarters of an hour. The film crew were out and about quite a lot in late 2009 tracking down some even more powerful under-water diggers.Old Pond expects to have this new programme on sale in October.

In 1964 Asian Transport, later to become Astran, pioneered overland transport from the UK to the Middle East, the 10,000 mile round trip that was to become a phenomenon in the haulage industry.

In the early days truckers had to cope with unfamiliar documentation, unmade roads, snowdrifts, dangerous mountains, desert sands and bandits. Some of these difficulties eased over the next twenty years, to be supplanted by problems of congested border posts and wars in the Balkans and Iran-Iraq.

The truckers who persevered were exceptional, needing high driving skills, stamina and diplomacy. Similarly, it was only the best companies – such as Astran – which ran the course.

Ashley Coghill’s celebration of Astran and its drivers covers all these points. He interviewed many of the people involved, not least Bob Paul, one of the company’s founder members. There are mini-biogs of Astran’s drivers and sub-contractors accompanied by a wealth of photographs. Even more detail is given to Gordon Pearce and Dick Snow.

The abundance of fine photographs continues through Ashley’s descriptions of the early, middle and later years of Astran. This provides a comprehensive history of the company.

Chapters are also devoted to other areas of special interest: Astran’s Doha depot; the delights of driving in Turkey; accidents and incidents; and the making of the television documentary Destination Doha.